Fiscal arithmetic & consolidation

SummaryThe Budget 2012-13 has been presented in an uncertain global economic environment and declining Indian economic growth.

The Budget 2012-13 has been presented in an uncertain global economic environment and declining Indian economic growth. Multiple challenges that had to be factored in while formulating the Budget proposals were global economic uncertainty, eroding investors confidence in India and economic growth and above all the issue of access of government provided services to the poor and deserving particularly the subsidies.

The Budget seems to have followed fiscal expansion both on the direct tax side and on plan expenditure. The direct tax proposal, as estimated, would result in a revenue loss of more than R4,000 crore. But in case of indirect taxes, particularly, in case of excise duty and service tax there has been a general increase in the rate.

Also, a welcome move is the introduction of negative list for service taxation. If implemented effectively, it can really broaden the base of service tax and improve revenues. Some of these tax measures seem to be the key to hold on to the fiscal deficit number at 5.1% of GDP, which is way above the FRBM target of 3%. The real question is whether this fiscal deficit number of 2012-13 is credible. Probably not.

Marginal decline in fiscal deficit as evidenced from 5.9 to 5.1% of GDP between 2011-12 (RE) and 2012-13 (BE) is not only ambitious but also relies on heavy compression of non-plan expenditure. It appears that the arithmetic has been worked out on a difficult to comply assumption, ie compression of non-plan expenditure.

If we look at the aggregate expenditure, the expenditure growth was estimated at 5.04% between 2010-11 actual and 2011-12(BE), while the growth in expenditure when compared with RE of 2011-12 has just doubled to 10.14% primarily due to the increase in revenue expenditure at a very high rate. The non-plan expenditure growth is estimated to be 8.7% for the 2012-13.

Again the expenditure growth in the last year was 9.02% as per the RE against the BE of -0.26%.

If you look at the non-plan expenditure, the Budget estimate for 2011-12 was R816,182 crore while the revised estimates shows an increase to R892,116 crore i.e. an increase to the order of around 10%. If such an overshooting of expenditure happens in the next fiscal year we may not be able to achieve even the 5% fiscal deficit target proposed for 2012-13. At the same time, the large revenue deficit of 3.4% estimated only shows that capital spending will be much

More from FE Insight

Data caFe: The GST's exemption complicationsAs the empowered committee (EC) on goods and service tax (GST) gets down to handling the specific issues, difference in the composition and handling of exemptions at the State and the Central level has thrown up a major challenge requiring deft handling.